


we play pretend

by hotdogluke



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Band Girls' Night, F/M, Fluff, Luke Can't Talk About His Feelings, big brother alex, luke and alex are exes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27487552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdogluke/pseuds/hotdogluke
Summary: "It’s easy to pretend. Okay, maybe easy isn’t the right word, but as long as no one directly talks about it, Julie and Luke are pretty good at not acknowledging the…whatever-it-is between them."/Or where Luke is bad with feelings and Julie knows it, but they've been pretending for too long and something's gotta give. Juke. One shot.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 301





	we play pretend

It’s easy to pretend.

Okay, maybe _easy_ isn’t the right word, but as long as no one directly talks about it, Julie and Luke are pretty good at not acknowledging the…whatever-it-is between them. They can act like they’re just best friends and bandmates, and she’s gotten used to playing along with his ‘ _If we don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist’_ approach to the situation. And despite the passing comments from Alex and Reggie’s almost constantly wiggling eyebrows whenever Julie and Luke so much as breathe in each other’s direction, the pretend-it-doesn’t-exist approach has worked thus far.

Even when they found out they could actually _touch_ a few weeks ago, nobody brought up how tightly they held each other the first time they hugged (nor how tightly they _still_ hold each other in every subsequent hug), or how tenderly they touched each other’s faces, or even the way they gripped each other’s hands as if letting go would destroy both their souls, magical club stamp or no. But things have slowly started getting more and more dicey, and she can tell Alex and Reggie are getting closer and closer to finally saying something.

So when she walks into an argument in the garage one night after getting home from a gig, her heart immediately drops. She isn’t even sure what it’s about yet, but she knows that if someone gets desperate for ammunition against Luke, their _interesting little relationship_ may as well be a freshly loaded weapon just begging for someone to pull the trigger. It’s not that _she_ particularly cares, but Luke isn’t all that good with feelings and having everything thrust out in the open might freak him out and make things weird.

“What’s going on?” she asks, trying to be nonchalant as she walks over to stand next to Luke in the loose circle the boys have made in the middle of the room.

“Reggie keeps slipping your number to Lifer girls while we’re performing,” Luke says, shooting another glare at the bassist.

Julie frowns. “Is that what all those random numbers are that keep calling me?” she asks.

“Girls have been calling and you haven’t told me?!” Reggie complains.

“I didn’t know!” Julie says. “And don’t give my number to strangers! Or to anyone!”

“It’s not like I have my _own_ number,” Reggie says. “I don’t see the big deal.”

“That is _not_ what you should be taking from this,” Julie splutters.

“You can’t be flirting with Lifers, man,” Alex says, shaking his head. “You’re _dead_.”

“Oh, so Luke can flirt with Lifers all he wants, but when I do it, it’s suddenly bad?”

All four of them freeze for a split second, as if waiting for someone to press a button to confirm that they really want to open these particular floodgates. But then Alex says, “That’s different. Luke flirts with _one_ Lifer.”

“Come on, man,” Julie complains under her breath, feeling for some reason like she’s being ratted out for something.

They all glance at Luke to see how he’s reacting to all this, but he stays cool as ever, resting an elbow on Julie’s shoulder. “First of all, I don’t flirt with anyone and I resent the implication. But if I _did_ , it would still be different from what Reggie’s doing because she can actually _see_ me.” Luke looks pointedly at Reggie, and Julie can’t help but release a silent sigh of relief; at least Luke didn’t spiral.

Reggie crosses his arms. “It’s not fair. And that’s a dumb reason for _this_ ”—he gestures between Luke and Julie—“to be okay, when what I’m doing apparently isn’t.”

“Never said it was okay,” Alex says. “Just different. But this conversation is about _you_ , Reggie, not them. We can get into their issues later.”

Julie frowns. “What issues?”

“There is no _this_ ,” Luke interrupts, gesturing between himself and Julie like Reggie did. “But again, if there was, there’d be a million reasons why it would be different. Like the fact that we’re actually _friends_ , and she knows I’m dead, and she flirts back. Or, she would, if I wasn’t still denying everything you’re saying.” 

Julie rolls her eyes and shrugs Luke’s elbow off her shoulder. “Stop giving my number to random girls,” she tells Reggie, who frowns at her. She looks at Alex. “And _you_ stop judging everyone because God knows we have plenty of issues with _your_ relationship. I mean, he works for the guy who tried to destroy your soul!” Alex presses his lips together and looks down. She turns her narrowed eyes on Luke. “And _you_ ,” she says, poking his chest, “are pissing everyone off right now.”

“Oh, _I’m_ pissing everyone off? You weren’t even a part of this conversation! But you just butted in and made it your business, just like always.”

Julie opens her mouth to argue back, but Alex speaks up before she does. “No,” he says. “Everybody stay away from each other until tomorrow. Julie needs to sleep, and clearly the three of us need some space. I’m not gonna sit here and listen to you two rip each other to shreds when this whole thing wasn’t even about you in the first place.”

“He’s the one who made it about us!” Luke complains, pointing at Reggie.

“I was just making a point!” Reggie argues. “And let the record show that I stand by it!”

“Yeah, well, your point was stupid, just like your face,” Luke tells him.

Reggie sets his jaw and lunges towards Luke, who looks ready to retaliate whatever Reggie tries, but Alex grabs Reggie before anything can happen. He looks at Julie. “I’ve got Reggie. Talk to him,” Alex says, gesturing with his head to Luke. Then he and Reggie vanish.

“I don’t need to be _talked to_ ,” Luke mutters through gritted teeth when they’re gone. He brushes past Julie to go collapse on the couch, laying sideways on his back with an arm thrown over his eyes.

Julie faces him, still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “You guys don’t really fight like that. Ever. Although calling him a stupid-face is pretty low on my list of insults.”

Luke lets out a half-sigh, half-chuckle. “He just made me mad,” he says, removing his arm from his face and resting his hand on his stomach instead. “He always says stuff like that, and it’s always a low blow, but saying it with you there…” He turns his head to look at her, not finishing his sentence.

“I mean, you played it off,” she says. “But the way you went about it was super annoying.”

He smiles a little. “Pretending nothing bothers me and being annoying are my two specialties,” he says.

“Reggie says stuff like that a lot?” Julie asks.

Luke shrugs, turning his gaze to the ceiling. “Mostly he’s just teasing. You know how he is. And to be completely honest, even though he was making a big deal about it, I’m pretty sure he’s rooting for us.” He pauses. “You know, if I was admitting to anything,” he adds halfheartedly. Because all they have left between them and actually, truly _talking_ about things is a few phrases neither of them means, and clearly he’s not ready to stop pretending things away yet. She tries not to be hurt.

But then he looks at her again and smiles softly, blue-green eyes sparkling with emotion he isn’t trying to hide, and that’s an admission in itself.

* * *

The next day is a Saturday, and after the tense events of last night, Julie needs a break. That’s how she, Alex, and Reggie end up on her bed, painting their nails and decompressing.

“You guys made up, right?” Julie asks, looking between Alex and Reggie.

“Of course we did,” Reggie says absently, knitting his eyebrows as he tries not to get any of the black polish on the skin around his thumbnail.

“ _All_ of you?” Julie asks.

“It was a stupid argument,” Alex says. “And besides, all we really have is each other, so we can’t stay mad forever, even if we wanted to.”

Julie nods and sits back against her pillows for a second. “I’m glad. Band practice would’ve been really awkward.”

The boys laugh, and Julie sits forward again to add her second coat of the new shimmery purple polish she got for her birthday.

“By the way,” Reggie says, still clearly focused on painting his nails, “I’m sorry if what I said yesterday made you uncomfortable or if things got weird between you and Luke. And I’m sorry for giving your number to strangers. I won’t do it anymore.”

“It’s okay,” Julie says, focused on her own nails. “Thank you.”

“So…you guys _did_ talk, right?” Alex asks, looking up from his pale pink polish. “Are things weird?”

“Nah,” Julie replies, not trusting herself to meet Alex’s eyes. “You know us.”

“Yeah, I _do_ know you,” Alex says, so serious now that Julie finally looks at him. She hates the soft concern in his eyes. “More specifically, I know _Luke_. And I know how much he likes to deny his feelings until you get so fed up you force him to admit them.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s for the best,” Julie says.

“You and I _both_ know that’s not true,” Alex tells her.

Julie sighs. “I thought you said we have issues.”

“You’ll have less issues once you actually talk.”

“But he’ll still be dead,” Reggie adds helpfully. “Hey, Julie, can you do my right hand?” he asks.

She turns to face Reggie and takes his hand gingerly, careful of her own wet nails, and starts painting his nails slowly. She’s thankful for the excuse to stop looking into Alex’s piercing eyes. “It’s like you said,” she finally says, keeping her eyes trained on her work, “Luke doesn’t do the whole _talking about feelings_ thing very well.”

“Something’s gotta give, Jules,” Alex says. “You know that.”

“It’s not _my_ job to force him to talk about his feelings,” she argues. “If he doesn’t want to, I’m not gonna push him.”

Alex sighs, capping his bottle of nail polish as he finishes his second coat. “He _does_ want to though,” Alex insists. “He just…needs a little help getting started.”

“No, what he _needs_ is to grow up,” Julie says. Reggie flinches at her tone, causing her to paint a black streak across three of his fingers. She sets her jaw. “Sorry,” she mutters, grabbing a tissue off her nightstand and wiping the polish off Reggie’s skin before it dries. She looks at Alex again. “Making him talk about his feelings may have worked for you, but that’s not how I want to do things, assuming he even _has_ feelings for me—”

“He does,” both boys interrupt in a simultaneous deadpan.

Julie sighs. “Look, Alex, I appreciate the advice, but it sounds to me like you’re just telling me to do what _you_ did, and don’t take this the wrong way, but clearly what you did didn’t work out.”

Alex laughs, Reggie joining in, and Julie silently breathes a sigh of relief that Alex isn’t mad before she laughs, too.

“Damn, Molina, you tell it like it is,” Alex says.

She smiles a little and shrugs innocently, picking up Reggie’s hand to finish up his first coat of polish.

“If it helps,” Alex adds, “he and I were pretty much doomed from the start. Luke’s general state of being doesn’t mesh all that well with anxiety, which is fine until he wants to take you cliff jumping for your three-month and he’s literally _vibrating_ the whole way there so you’re already on edge, then you start hyperventilating right before he drags you off the cliff with him.”

Julie pauses, finished with Reggie’s first coat. She raises her eyebrows at Alex, whose breathing has picked up a little at the memory he shared. “You okay, buddy?”

“All good,” he says, looking _not_ all good. But he shakes his head and continues, “My point is, the way I handled things feelings-wise wasn’t really what broke us up.”

“Okay, well, regardless, I still wanna do things my way,” Julie says.

“I’m so alone,” Reggie complains. “Hey, Julie, if things don’t work out with Luke, can I have him?”

“Okay, what we’re _not_ gonna do is pass Luke around the band like a hot potato.”

“Don’t know what any of that means, but you think I’m hot?” a voice says from behind her.

Her heart drops, and she looks at Alex and Reggie across from her, who are both as wide-eyed as she knows she is. She quickly turns to face Luke, plastering on her best smile. “Luke!” she says with forced enthusiasm. “What have I told you about knocking?” She keeps the smile on her face, but she makes sure her glare at him is red-hot.

“I forgot,” he says with a shrug. “What are you guys doing? And why are you passing me around like a hot potato?” He walks over to the bed and examines the scene: nail polish bottles scattered over the bed, tissues and cotton pads soaked with nail polish remover in piles between them, and his three red-faced bandmates eagerly blowing on their wet nails just to have something to do.

“We’re having girls’ night,” Alex tells him.

Luke frowns. “Why wasn’t I invited?”

“We weren’t sure if you’d wanna come.” Alex flutters his fingers, palm facing himself, to draw Luke’s attention to his nails.

“Bro, you _know_ I’d wanna come,” Luke says with a frown.

“You’re also not good at girl talk,” Reggie pipes up. Julie gives him a glare and grabs his hand again, squeezing until he winces, before starting to apply his second coat of black polish.

“Girl talk?”

“Oh, you know,” Julie says absently, refusing to look at him. “Butterflies. Glitter.”

“Love me some glitter,” Reggie says. She squeezes his hand again, and he squeaks in pain before going silent.

“Either way, you’re here now,” Alex says. “What color do you want? I’m partial to this pink”—he holds up the bottle of polish he used—“but I feel like a yellow might fit better with your personality.”

“Yeah, okay…” Luke says slowly, making his way over to the bed but still looking between them suspiciously. He settles between Julie and Alex.

“Here, I can help you with your first coat before I do my clear coat,” Alex says, reaching over to the box of nail polish in the middle of their little circle and pulling out a bright yellow.

“I have no idea what any of that means.”

“It’s okay, buddy. I don’t either,” Reggie says with a smile.

Alex, Reggie, and Julie exchange a few looks, but eventually Luke must forget about the whole not-being-invited thing as well as the whole hot-potato thing because he doesn’t bring either up again.

* * *

“Okay, _what_ was going on the other night?” Luke asks as soon as he and Julie are alone together in the studio a few days later. They were supposed to be writing music, but apparently Luke just used it as an excuse.

“What other night?” Julie asks weakly.

“ _’Girls’ night_ ,’” Luke says, making air quotes. He frowns. “Why wasn’t I invited? Of course I would’ve wanted to come.”

Julie sighs, standing up from the piano bench and wringing her hands. She wishes her nail polish wasn’t serving as a reminder of that night, but there’s not much she can do about it now.

“And I can _so_ do girl talk,” Luke continues from where he’s sitting on the couch, his guitar forgotten beside him.

“Can you?” Julie asks, then immediately winces at Luke’s deepening frown. She takes a few rushed steps towards him, then hesitates. “What I mean is, girl talk is just all about _feelings_ , and, well…feelings aren’t really your thing.”

“I feel things,” Luke says.

“You don’t like talking about them. And that’s what girl talk _is_.”

“I still should’ve been invited.” He crosses his arms, pouting at her.

She sighs and goes to sit next to him on the couch, resting her hand on his arm. She pretends she doesn’t feel his bicep immediately tighten under her hand. “Look,” she says as delicately as possible, “girl talk is about… _specific_ feelings. _Romantic_ feelings. We talk about exes, people we’re talking to, current relationships…”

As soon as he meets her eyes, she knows he isn’t getting it. She closes her eyes for a second and takes a deep breath, dropping her hand into her lap before looking at him again. “And I know this is gonna go right to your ego…but a lot of the time, _you_ come up as one of the main topics of conversation.”

His eyebrows scrunch together. “You guys talk about me behind my back?”

“Not like that!” Julie says quickly, eyes wide. “It’s just…” She groans in frustration and runs her hands through her hair. “Okay,” she says, meeting his eyes. “you just fit into one of those categories for two out of the three of us. It’s nothing _bad_ , just…talking. Getting feelings out.”

“Julie,” he says slowly, “tell me like I’m five.”

“That _was_ me telling you like you’re five.”  
“Well, then, you would _suck_ as a kindergarten teacher.” He stands up and starts pacing in front of her, and she instantly understands why it annoys him when Alex does it. “So you guys just _talk_ about me when I’m not even there? What the hell, Julie?” He stops and looks at her, and she rolls her eyes and stands up.

“It’s not like that!” she says again. “The conversation usually goes something like, ‘Hey, Julie, you and Luke were doing that thing again,’” she says, lowering her voice to mimic Alex before continuing in her own voice. “‘Hey, Alex, I know, I was there.’ ‘Hey, Julie, are you and Luke ever gonna talk about your feelings? Since I dated the guy for three months, I know absolutely everything.’” She knows she’s kind of throwing Alex under the bus, especially because he really has helped her understand Luke a little more, but she’s frustrated.

Luke knits his eyebrows again, but his shoulders relax just slightly. “So he’s trying to give you advice. About me.” He scrunches up his face. “That’s so _weird_ , dude! Why are you taking advice from Alex about me?! Why do you need advice about me at all?!”

“Because you refuse to talk about your feelings!” she shouts. “All we do is just pretend there’s nothing there, when everyone and their mother knows there is, and sometimes you’re so good at it I wonder if _I’m_ crazy for thinking you ever liked me at all, and I’m _tired_ , Luke!”

He takes a step back, eyes wide and lips slightly parted in surprise. He swallows. “I…”

Julie shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair before sitting back down on the couch and burying her face in her hands. She groans in frustration (again) and lifts her head, but she keeps her eyes trained on her hands in her lap as she wrings her fingers. “And I know it’s hard for you,” she says softly, “and I didn’t wanna push you or freak you out or scare you off, so I just pretended along with you and acted like everything was okay. But something’s gotta give.” She looks up at him as she echoes Alex’s words from the other night. Maybe he knows a few things after all.

Luke hesitates, but then he walks over and kneels in front of her so they’re eye-level, taking her hands. “I’m sorry, Julie. You’re _so_ important to me, and I…I guess I’m afraid that the closer you get, the more it’ll hurt if I ever lose you. And, you know, the whole me being dead thing isn’t great either…”

She smiles a little, and he smiles too, his eyes brightening.

“But I should’ve known that losing you would kill me all over again no matter how much I tried to convince myself that not talking about my feelings meant they weren’t real. And I should’ve known that I shouldn’t be worrying about losing you and I should just be enjoying the moment whenever I’m with you.”

“You should’ve known a lot of things,” she says quietly, making them both laugh a little.

He leans forward until his forehead rests against hers, and she closes her eyes.

“The one thing I _did_ know was that I was a goner the moment I met you,” he tells her, his voice barely audible. “And all that other stuff was just me trying to pretend I wasn’t.”

She squeezes his hands. “You know I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “You’re not gonna lose me; if you try, I’ll hunt you down and kill you a third time. You know, assuming losing me still kills you all over again.”

“Triple death does _not_ sound fun,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “I think maybe we just shouldn’t lose each other.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He pulls away from her. “Hey,” he says, and she opens her eyes. “I’m sorry for not talking to you sooner and making you think you couldn’t talk to me. I always want you to be able to talk to me, Jules, about anything. Even feelings.”

She smiles a little. “Thanks, Luke. This…wasn’t so bad.”

He rolls his eyes, laughing a little. “Yeah, because I’m just pouring my heart out to you while you sit there and do nothing. Me carrying you yet again.”

Now _she_ rolls her eyes and laughs, pulling her hands out of his to shove his shoulder. “Oh, shut up,” she says, which makes him laugh harder. “You’re insufferable.”

He just grins at her, his eyes sparkling, and rests his hands on the couch on either side of her legs before leaning so close their noses almost touch. Her breath catches, here laughter dying in her throat.

“Yeah, I’m gonna kiss you now,” he says quietly.

Somehow, even though he literally _told_ her he was going to do it, she’s still surprised when he actually kisses her. Her lips curl into a smile that matches his as she wraps her arms around him.

Then he pulls away just barely. “Oh, and in case it wasn’t glaringly obvious,” he says quietly, his smiling lips still brushing against hers as he talks, “I definitely, one hundred percent, really, _really_ like you.”

He kisses her again before she has a chance to say it back, but she’s pretty sure he gets the idea.


End file.
